


Antecedent

by gleefulmusings



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Overuse of italics, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1778197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gleefulmusings/pseuds/gleefulmusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Xander is reunited with his favorite broom closet but wrong sparring partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antecedent

“I don’t know what to say.”  
  
There was a lot he _could_ have said.

How infuriated and embarrassed he was to have been led into this farce under false pretenses.

How his heart had soared when he had first received the note, believing Cordelia had forgiven him, and then crashed and burned when he walked into this room, this broom closet – _their_ broom closet – and found not her, but him.

How scared and touched he was by such aggressive measures.

How badly he wanted to flee.  
  
Percy took another step closer. “Tell me you don’t want this, don’t want me. Tell me that you’ve forgotten how it used to be with us, before your cock-blockers Rosenberg and McNally convinced you it was wrong.”  
  
“It wasn’t their decision,” Xander said quickly. “It was mine.”  
  
Percy’s laugh was brittle. “Right, because we all know you never listen to Rosenberg about who you date. Let’s go ask Chase about that, huh?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Xander hissed. “You don’t get to talk about Cordy. You don’t even get to say her name.”

He watched with trepidation and not a bit of awe as the anger swelled in Percy’s eyes, before finally dimming a few seconds later.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Percy whispered, taking another step closer, “but do you know how hard it was for me to watch you with her? The way you looked at her, like she was the only person in the world? Like she was everything?”  
  
“She was. She _is_.”  
  
“That used to be me.”  
  
“That was a long time ago, Percy.”  
  
“Not that long.” He rushed forward and placed his hands on the wall on either side of the other boy’s head, keeping him from leaving.  
  
“Long enough,” Xander sniped, “and it’s not like you were alone all that time. You’ve fucked everything in a skirt that gave you a second look. Probably everything in a jockstrap, too.”  
  
Percy sighed with contentment at the jealousy, his head bending down until it was almost resting on Xander’s own. The girls, yeah, sure. But no guys. Only him. Only Harris.

“Your hair smells the same,” he breathed, “like coconut.” He inhaled deeply, pleased when Xander shuddered, not caring what caused it. Fear, anger, want; anything to cause a provocation, a confrontation. “The others didn’t mean anything; they weren’t you.”  
  
“Fine, but Cordy meant everything to _me_.”  
  
“Then why were you banging Rosenberg on the side?”  
  
“It wasn’t like that! Not at _all_.”  
  
“I don’t care.” Percy dropped his head further, his mouth coming to Xander’s ear. “I still remember what your cock tastes like, Harris, its heaviness on my tongue.” He smiled in triumph when Xander’s breath hitched and then stilled. “Do you remember what it was like when it was just the two of us, all alone? No nosy friends, no stupid parents, nothing but you and me and you riding my dick.” He clapped a hand over Xander’s mouth to stave off a reply he was fairly sure he didn’t wish to hear, preferring instead to place a soft, gentle kiss on the skin just behind Xander’s ear, knowing the reaction it would elicit, smirking when Xander moaned quietly. “I was inside you.”  
  
Xander placed his hands on Percy’s chest and shoved with all the force inside him, knocking the other boy to the floor. “We had sex, West. It wasn’t some great love affair; it was sex. We don’t even like each other. We never did.”  
  
“Fuck you,” a stung Percy seethed, looking up at him with shining eyes brimming with hurt. “It was a lot more than you want to remember. It wasn’t just one time, Harris, or just _fifty_ times. And it wasn’t _just_ fucking. You _know_ that.”  
  
Xander heard the break, the desperation, in Percy’s voice and flinched, guilt gnawing at him for taking some pleasure in causing this, in seeing Percy so unseated, so unsure of himself. But he couldn’t lie.

“It was more than sex,” he softly agreed.  
  
“I loved you.”  
  
“Whoa, hold up!” Xander exclaimed. “You _loved_ me? No,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t think so. We were young, Perce, we were figuring things out, experimenting or whatever, and okay, there were definitely some feelings involved. But love? No.”  
  
“ _Don’t_ tell me what I feel.”  
  
“Feel?" repeated a bewildered Xander. "Present tense?”  
  
“Yeah, fucking _present tense_ ,” Percy spat. “Do you know what it was like for me? We were together for months, Harris – _months_ – and then it just stopped. You didn’t tell me why or what had happened to change everything. You just stopped coming over. Didn’t return my calls. You stopped talking to me altogether. Nothing! Was I just supposed to get over it like nothing happened, like _I_ was nothing? How could you _do_ that to me? How could you hurt me like that? What did I do that was so wrong, so _bad_?”  
  
And though Xander heard every word, every nuance behind them, the voice asking them belonged to Cordelia, and he finally realized just how badly he had fucked everything up and not for the first time. He really _was_ an asshole.

He walked forward and slid down the wall, taking Percy’s face in his hands.

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I did that to you.”  
  
“So why did you?”  
  
He mulled it over for a second before understanding that anything less than total honesty would not only be unfair, but wrong. “Because I was scared. You scared me.”  
  
Percy’s laugh was filled with incredulity. “How? I never hurt you. I never made demands on you. I didn’t threaten you.”  
  
“But you did. I was never that close with anyone before, not even Jess or Will. More than anything, I was scared of myself, of everything I was feeling.”  
  
“For me?”   
  
The anguished misery in the question broke his heart. “For you.”

Xander sighed again and shook his head. “You made me feel things I had never felt before, that I never knew myself capable of feeling, and it was reaching the point where I could think of nothing but you.”  
  
“What’s so wrong with that?”  
  
“Look, let’s be real, okay? Where was it going? It’s not like we were high school sweethearts who were heading off to Homecoming together. We lived in two different worlds; we _still_ do. And yeah, I was a complete bastard, a total coward for ending things that way, or for not ending them at all, but we had no future together.”  
  
“Oh, I see,” Percy scoffed, “but you could have had one with Cordelia?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Xander snapped back, “but I wanted one.”  
  
“Last time I checked, you two were from different worlds as well. So why didn’t it happen, huh? What, she scared you too?”  
  
“Yeah,” Xander whispered after a very pregnant silence.  
  
“Jesus,” Percy muttered. “You want to be real? Fine. You’re a fucking sack of shit who jerks people around and then checks out when things start getting a little too _real_ ," he sneered. "You walk around here like a kicked puppy wondering how everything went wrong in your life, when it’s you who caused it all.”  
  
“I know that. I know I fuck everything up.”  
  
Percy quickly wiped his eyes and stood. “I wanted you. I would have stayed with you. We could have gone to Homecoming together. I never gave a shit what anyone thought. _You_ were the one who was always so afraid someone would find out. You couldn’t handle your precious _feelings_ , so you just tossed me away like a used newspaper. Well, that’s neat, isn’t it? Nice and tidy. You didn’t give a _shit_ what that did to me, how I thought of nothing but you for the next _year_. How I started fucking everything in sight, people whose names I don’t even remember or maybe never even knew, just trying to get your face out of my head. _And I never could_. How everything reminded me of you. How no one else touched me the way you did, or kissed me like you did, or moaned my name like you did.”

He punched the wall. “No, I had to watch you day in and day out. Drooling over Summers like an asshole. Somehow ending up with the hottest girl in school and then throwing that away because you couldn’t stop making cow eyes at that mousy Rosenberg.” He smiled and shook his head. “And the real kicker? I still want you.” He sighed. “Christ, I’m pathetic.”  
  
Xander rose to his feet and dusted off his pants. “You’re not, Percy. That’s the thing. Don’t you get it? _I’m_ pathetic. I always have been and I always will be.”  
  
Percy stared at him. “Are you honestly going to sit there and play the martyr with me?”  
  
“No. I’m just telling you the truth. That’s what you wanted, right? I don’t know how to be happy, but I _do_ want to be happy.” He moved forward and placed his hand on Percy’s cheek. “And you made me happy, you did, and I’m sorry for how badly I hurt you. I really am.”  
  
Percy sighed and closed his eyes, leaning into the caress. “Can’t we try again? Please?”  
  
Xander shook his head. “No. I’m so sorry, baby, but no. I love her. I still love her so much, and I won’t do that to you. Not again.”  
  
“Maybe I don’t care.”  
  
“But I do, and I care too much about you to use you that way.”  
  
“You care about me?”  
  
“I never stopped.”  
  
“Then prove it.”  
  
Xander blinked. “How?”  
  
“Fuck me. Right here, right now. Show me you care, show me how sorry you are. Show me that I meant _something_ to you.”  
  
“Percy, no.”  
  
Percy rushed him and tackled him to the floor. “Yes. You _will_. You _owe_ me.” He rolled them over and straddled Xander, leaning down and forcing a kiss. “For three years I’ve watched you with these other women and I hate them, and I hate you for being with them.” He held Xander down with one hand and unbuckled the boy’s pants with the other. “You treated me like shit when I did nothing to hurt you and I can’t move on.” He pulled his shirt over his head. “Just once. Just one more time, okay? Please, Harris.”  
  
“And if I say no? What, you’re going to force me? Will that make you happy? Is that going to even the score?”  
  
Percy’s shoulders sagged as his head dropped. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”  
  
“What do you call this?”  
  
“You don’t know me at all.”  
  
“Yeah, I do, and I know this isn’t what you really want.” He pushed himself up on his hands. “But if you think this is what you need, okay.”  
  
“A pity fuck. That’s all I rate. You’re so generous, Harris.”  
  
“What do you want from me, West?”  
  
“I want you to care! I want you to hurt like you hurt me.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Because of _her_.” He shook his head. “That’s not good enough, not for me. But you know what? I’m _glad_ you’re hurting and I’m glad she's the one who caused it. I never liked her but I have a whole new appreciation for her bitchery. You don’t deserve her.”  
  
“I know. And I didn’t deserve you.”  
  
Percy frowned and cocked his head. “Is that…did you really think that?”  
  
Xander looked away. “Yeah.”  
  
“You’re stupid.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“So you dumped me before I could dump you? Could you be any more lame?”  
  
“Probably not.”  
  
Despite his best effort, Percy laughed and then sighed. “Do you ever miss me at all?”  
  
Again, Xander reached up and stroked Percy’s face. “More than you know.”  
  
Percy groaned and closed his eyes, settling in more fully in Xander’s lap. “You’re hard.”  
  
“Um, duh? You’re half-naked and sitting on my dick.”  
  
“Are you sure you don’t want...?”  
  
“Oh, I _want_ to. Believe me, I want to, but it would only hurt you, and I think I’ve done that enough.”  
  
“Am I supposed to thank you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Can you tell me how to get over this?”  
  
“I’m _so_ the wrong person to ask.”  
  
“You know, if you were really a decent guy, you'd at least blow me.”  
  
“We’ve already established that I’m pretty much an asshole.”  
  
“Can I blow you?”  
  
“Percy.”  
  
“Just a kiss. Can I have that much?”  
  
“You can have that,” Xander said quietly before pulling Percy down on top of him.


End file.
